


Uncharted

by recrudescence



Category: Across the Universe - Fandom
Genre: Max/Jude/Prudence - Freeform, Multi, NC-17, across the universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 19:37:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recrudescence/pseuds/recrudescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're missing out," Prudence trilled again. "He's really good in bed." And Max smirked and shrugged noncommittally. Jude still wasn't sure whether to be concerned or intrigued.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Uncharted

Someone trickled soap down his front.

The showerhead was sputtering out the last few gushes of hot water and Jude, the strongest of the three of them, easily wrestled his way into standing squarely underneath and catching the most of it. Head tipped back, eyes squeezed shut, stealing the final tepid rivulets as they streamed down.

Not enough hot water to last three showers in a row, so conservation it was, giddily clambering over the rim of the tub and struggling to keep the shower curtain closed. With two roommates naked and only inches away, conversation was bound to be herded down one prurient route or another.

“You’re missing out,” Prudence trilled again. “He’s really good in bed.” And Max smirked and shrugged noncommittally. Jude still wasn’t sure whether to be concerned or intrigued. He kissed her cheek and followed Max’s example.

Max dispersed affection easily, radiating bonhomie without regard for gender. The apartment was too small for secrets; quarters too cramped to overlook who ended up curled up in someone’s bed. The first time he’d walked in to find Max with a very male head pressed up between his legs, Jude hadn’t been sure what to say. Max had laughed and pulled himself together without missing a beat, completely unselfconscious, and the three of them ended up eating takeout and getting stoned off their asses.

Nothing was ever a big deal to Max.

Prudence, innocently hanging up a washcloth: upswept eyes, uplifted mouth, tiny nipples taut. “I think we should show her our thanks for being so enthusiastic,” Max said, eyes glinting, and they each took one into their mouths until she shrieked with laughs and openhandedly batted them back.

Jude extricated himself as she turned off the tap, toweling over his head and knotting it around his hips. There was still no mirror in the bathroom, but he didn’t mind; nothing to look at he didn’t already know. Strong from the docks, dark and knotted, eyes that gleamed too much, like chips of flint striking sparks with every glance. Dark and rough and ugly like stone, raw and unhewn and lurching to life, straining to create beauty to make up for the ugliness.

He liked the metaphor better than the reflection. Still steeped in that Liverpudlian gloom, where citizens buttoned on the sky every day and worked until everything washed out to a dull, murky brown. And even so, Max was clearly game.

_Maxwell_. It didn’t fit him at all. An authoritative name; aristocratic: not like Jude with its connotations of vice and betrayal. Max looking him right in the eye, lithe and golden and grinning, hair plastered to his head like beaten bronze, dripping on freckled shoulders. Jude rolled his eyes, reached out a hand, and decided he could always pin the blame on Prudence for goading him into wrenching that damp head down and taking some of that lightness for his own.

It was worth it.

The three of them flopping down onto Max’s bed after drying off as perfunctorily as possible, passing around glasses of wine. Prudence smiled and Jude could taste it in her mouth, blackberry-sharp and cheaply tart. On her knees between them, swathed in an overlarge robe, tilting away from Max’s mouth and urging him to try it again. Like some new shade of eye shadow or a draw on a cigarette. Uttering the comparison aloud found him caught in a headlock with his nose smashing into Max’s damp armpit. “Yeah, _that_’s a turn-on.”

“Fuck off,” Max shoved him backwards and amused himself by balancing a wineglass on Jude’s chest.

Still strange, knowing that a few months ago he’d been roughhousing on the docks, in the streets, in the pubs, as Max wrestled on velvet couches in ivy-draped fraternity houses, went tap-leaping on the rooftops without thinking twice, burning through life and his parents’ money in a blithe, bright blur. Prudence was tracing circles down his sides with her fingertips and he held his breath, trying not to squirm involuntarily and upset the glass. Wine-tinged lips pressed against his own and it occurred to him he didn’t know where she’d come from before faltering through their window like a small bedraggled animal.

Jude hissed when the curve of a fingernail skimmed over his hipbone. “Ah-ah.” Max quirked an eyebrow and steadied the glass while Prudence dipped her head to trace the same path with a slow sweep of tongue. “It’s not right to judge the makeup until you’re sure it’s not your color.”

”That’s what you want?” The glass was gone and they were pressed completely together, nothing but towels in the way and Max’s perfect teeth gleaming in a too-close crescent. When he got in a glance to the side, Prudence was sipping her wine delicately, leaning against the headboard as if she were watching TV. _You’re missing out_, she’d said.

Boldly, brashly, hitch up his hips, get in a good rough rub against the other’s groin, through the towel, and Max groaned. Hardly audible over the heartbeat-hum in Jude’s ears, but enough.

Hard, nudging into terrycloth—strange-but-not—Max’s hair falling in his face, gasping a little against his throat. Firmer, heavier, not all that different than dorm-room wrestling, only this time Max was purposely rolling his hips. Hell, why not?

Max clearly sensed compliance and laughed into Jude’s shoulder, skating knuckles under the loose twist of towel. His mouth was broad and sweet and somewhere in there Prudence shimmied out of her robe and pressed up along Jude’s other side, adding her own contributions until he was shuddering between the two of them. It took some time before he managed to draw back a little, mentally and physically, just to frown and study Max for a few moments, study the options. Jude devoutly didn’t want to know what might happen if something went wrong and the primary thought trumpeting through his head was that it seemed bizarre to put something up into an orifice that existed to push things _out_.” I’m sticking _nothing_ up there, understand?” Max snorted.

“But,” Jude continued, “if your morals are lax enough to let you get away with it…”

Max’s face nefariously pleated into a smile. “You want me to do you?”

It took a few awkward minutes of rattling around before Max came up with some sweet-scented massage oil, probably pilfered from Sadie’s vanity, that dripped coolly over his hand. Jude determined this would be considerably less weird if he was facing away, less so with Prudence kissing him and slipping a hand up around the base of him. He could almost ignore what was taking place behind him.

“You ever?” Max said, as if it wasn’t obvious.

“Shut up and come on.”

Prudence seemed incapable of popping her head up and giving helpful suggestions here and there. ”You are such a backseat driver,” Max complained. “Jude, keep her busy, will you?”

“Look who’s talking,” she retorted, and Jude could hear the grin in her voice.

“If you two don’t shut the…” he started to protest, trailing off thanks to a fingertip skimming in a slow, slick circle without moving in yet.

That first finger caught him off guard, to the point of clenching up everywhere. An inchoate sound of uncertainty formed in his mouth and Prudence parried it with ease. Soothed it, sated it, stroked it with her tongue, then urged his head the other way for Max to pick up where she’d left off. Prudence’s fist shifted, Max’s finger straightened, and he groaned a little into that insolently smirking mouth. This was Max—took him into his fold minutes after meeting him—and it should feel odd, awkward, but there was intrigue there too. And no goddamn reason whatsoever to be nervous about _Max_.

Prudence molded along his front, and _that_ he understood, at least, easy to work his own fingertip against her, keep that action at the forefront of his mind. He couldn’t keep from thinking, over and over, that it hadn’t been a good idea to do this sober. Should’ve had a joint, a little more to drink, something to have gotten him looser.

Swearing into Prudence’s hair, pressing and curving a second finger into her when he felt Max doing the same. Hard to focus on _anything_, trying not to squirm. Spread open and inexperienced and pressed _into_, but Max obviously had some idea of what he was doing and something about his hot-quick gasps made Jude shudder back against him. Prudence still slick and clenching around his fingers, muttering half-intelligible platitudes—_doing okay, just try not to tense up_—rasp of facial hair, wetness of tongue over his nape, lapping up behind his ear, Max hissing-nibbling there, teeth and _words_, hushed and heated as a jet of steam. “F…_God_you…_Jesus_, man.” Buckshove_spill_ warm and messy over a hand that it took him almost a full disoriented minute to place as Max’s.

From that point on, it was…uncomfortable. Stifling and strange, catching his breath sandwiched between two overheated bodies that gradually eased away. That helped somewhat, having more space to breathe. When he brought himself to actually move, Jude turned over feeling sticky and achy and strangely boneless.

Bare and tousled, Max was pouring more wine and Prudence was twisting the lid back on the oil bottle, seemingly carefree as anything. Both of them looking carefully, appraisingly at him all the while. Waiting.

“Here you go.” With exaggerated solemnity, Max held out one of the glasses. “And congratulations on your initiation into a new stewpot of corruption. To—what do your people call it? To buggery!”

Jude took it from him, cracked a small smile. “I need a shower.”

As he watched, a few almost invisible strands of tension slid off Max’s face. “You know, it’s gonna be a bitch doing that alone if the water’s still freezing.”


End file.
